


Bathed In Light

by Sapphy



Series: Bad Day Prompts [2]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Pets, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 19:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4534851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/Sapphy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto enjoys a rare quiet evening in the hub.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bathed In Light

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing these two. Sorry if it's awful!

Myfanwy swoops down the moment the door opens, dive-bombing Ianto and snapping irritably at his hair. He swats irritably at her, but she’s large and strong and familiar enough with him not to be afraid, so she just catches his hand in her beak, giving what is probably meant to be a playful nibble but is still hard enough to draw blood, and swoops away, screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Jack,” Ianto calls, setting the box of pens and coffee filters he’d been to fetch on Tosh’s desk. “Did you forget to feed the Pterodactyl again?”

“I didn’t forget,” Jack shouts back from his office, “I just didn’t do it yet.”

Which means he was hoping if he put it off for long enough, that Ianto would take over and do it for him.

“He’s a terrible boss,” Ianto tells Myfanwy. “The worst. And an even worse owner. And we don’t find him even a little bit adorable, do we girl?”

Myfanwy lands heavily on the desk beside him, narrowly avoiding tipping coffee filters and pens all over the floor, and tilts her head in that adorable birdlike way she does when she’s listening to him speak. Not that she understands anything he says of course, pterodactyls are thick even by the standards of bird and lizards, but she’s good at pretending she is, when she thinks there might be food in it for her.

“Sometimes I think you’re my favourite person in Torchwood,” Ianto tells her, and she squawks at him, the eardrum shattering noise that’s her version of a friendly chirp.

“Come on then girl, let’s get you some supper,” he says, holding out an arm for her. She’s much too big and heavy to carry around often, but she likes it, and he feels like she needs a treat after Jack forgot to feed her. She scrambles up his arm, doing irreparable damage to his good suit with claws and beak, and perches herself on his shoulder, resting her head affectionately on his hair. She weighs a tonne, and she’s big enough that she can’t easily fit both feet onto his shoulder, but if he’d wanted a normal pet, he’d have got a job somewhere else, so he just tries not to stumble under the added weight as they make their careful way over to the miniaturised stasis chamber they use for storing her food.

It’s 33rd century technology, probably amazingly valuable, but all Ianto can say is that it’s always kept the fish nice and fresh.

He hand feeds Myfanwy whole pilchards dipped in her favourite barbeque sauce, long practise the only thing that keeps him from getting his fingers bitten off. Poor thing must have been starving.

When she’s full (for the moment at least, she’ll be hungry again in only a few minutes if he knows her) he washes his hands in the caustic carbolic soap that’s the only thing that will fully get rid of the smell from his hands, and goes in search of Jack.

Jack’s in his office, as always, some kind of future machine (after a while you learn to spot the difference between future and alien. It’s all in the angles) scattered in pieces across his desk, while Jack does something with a screwdriver. They have better tools, hard light clamps and chrono-spanners, but Jack says he prefers the normal ones, and Ianto knows him well enough not to mention the way his hands shake, very slightly, when he says it. Jack has triggers, things that can get him lost in his head, or make in lash out with unexpected rage, or retreat into himself, avoid contact for days afterwards, and Ianto’s learnt it’s best not to ask too many questions about them. He never likes the answers.

Now though, Jack looks happy and focuses, a long screw balanced in the corner of his mouth like a cigarette and sweaty hair falling into his eyes as he does something technical with some part of the machine which glows a soft comforting orange, bathing Jack in warm light.

“Heya handsome,” Ianto says, leaning on the doorframe to watch him. “Sure there isn’t something you’d rather put in your mouth?”

It’s a Jack line, flirty and obscene and silly all at once, the kind of thing he’d never say to anyone else. With Jack it’s easier. He doesn’t have to be embarrassed with Jack, because the man’s more than 200 years old, and has seen everything. He’s unembarrassed and unashamed of the silly human bits of himself, and it’s an attitude that rubs off on the people around him, makes them happier to be themselves.

Most people would say Jack is a bad influence, but Ianto knows better.

“Ianto Jones, that was a terrible line,” Jack says, spitting out the screw so he can grin. “I’m proud of you.”

“Well I did learn from the best, Sir,” he says, grinning back.

“If you’re going to start calling me sir, I’ll never get this finished,” he says, not sounding like he’d mind very much. It’s very rare that Jack objects to Ianto distracting him from his work, and that’s one hell of an ego-boost, because the work is all Jack has.

“What is it?” Ianto asks, coming into the room to stand as Jack’s back and stare down at the pieces of the contraption.

“Nothing important,” Jack says, slotting a metallic panel into place over the glow. “A toy.”

“Show me?” Ianto asks, because it looks finished, and he loves learning new things about other worlds and times and peoples, almost as much as he loves spending time with Jack.  
“It’s silly,” Jack says, but he reaches over and switches the machine on.

The soft orange light grows and spreads, forming shapes in the air, a sun, and three moons, so clear they look real.

“It’s beautiful,” Ianto breaths, reaching out to slide a finger through one of the moons, check that they are holograms and not real.

Jack puts a hand on his waist, smiles at him when he looks up. “I had one just like it when I was a boy. I couldn’t sleep without it.”

“Where are these?” Ianto asks. He wants to press Jack, find out more about his past, but he doesn’t want to spoil to warm comfortable atmosphere of the moment.

“A long way from here. They haven’t been named yet. Not even the Sontarans will discover them for another few centuries. No human inhabitants until the 49th Century.”

“Is that all it does?” Sure the holograms are a little more advanced than anything humanity has right now, but it’s hardly revolutionary.

“That’s all it does,” Jack confirms. “You put in coordinates, and it projects an image what that sector of space looks like right now.”

Oh, well that’s a lot fancier than Ianto had thought. “And you picked this sun because…?” He has an idea, but he wants to hear Jack say it.

“Because it was my sun. Will be my sun, I mean. That was the view from the top of the city I grew up in. I used to sneak up there, when I wanted to be alone, and just watch the moons.”

“And it can show us anywhere in the universe?”

“Pretty much. There’s a few places… Going by the last coordinates it had stores, it broke when someone tried to look at one of the old Time War battle sites, one the ones that doesn’t entirely exist anymore. But as long as it’s somewhere real, it can show it.”

“I’ve…” Ianto begins, then pauses, worried Jack will laugh. It’s such a small human request, compared to alien battlefields and long ahead worlds. Jack wraps his arms around his waist, rests his chin and Ianto’s shoulder.

“What?”

“I’ve always wanted to see the Northern Lights. Do you think it could…?”

Jack laughs, warm and affectionate. “That’s what I like about you Ianto. You’re so grounded. All of the cosmos on offer, and you want to see something practically in your own back yard. No,” he adds quickly, when Ianto tries to pull away, “I wasn’t mocking. It’s good. I like it. One of us has got to have his feet on the ground in this partnership, and I’m glad it doesn’t have to be me.”

He pulls away and presses a quick kiss to the nearest bit of Ianto’s face, which happens to be his chin, and keys something into the machine’s control panel.

Jack’s long away sun flickers and disappears, warm orange replaced by the pure white light of distant stars, clear and visible in a way the night sky never is in Cardiff.

After a moment, there’s a flash of colour, a sudden splash of lime green, gone as quickly as it came. Then there’s another, the soft salmon pink of rose wine, then orange, yellow, a slow blaze the exact shade of blue of Jack’s eyes. 

Ianto stares, bathed in colour, so enchanted he almost doesn’t notice Jack leaning in for a kiss.

It’s a long slow kiss, the kind you only get when you know each other well, more affection than sex. 

Tomorrow there’ll be disasters to deal with, and Alien plots to thwart, and Owen will be bitter, and Gwen will be kind, and Tosh will be a genius, and everything will be hectic and terrifying and normal. 

But for now, for one moment in the endless sea of time, everything’s perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love.
> 
> Having a bad day? Leave your own prompt here: http://sapphywatchesyousleep.tumblr.com/


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